Medicine on the Move: Early Modern Travel and Remedies

As my new project on the history of travel, health risk and preparation begins to get underway, one of the things that I am thinking about is the place of travel within early modern medical remedy culture. What kinds of conditions could befall travellers? What did early modern people think that the processes of travel, and different kinds of transport, could do to their bodies, and what types of remedies were available to deal with them. Research is still at a very early stage, but there are already some interesting hints that remedies were available to treat a variety of travel-related conditions. 

Before the broadening of travel in the 18^th century, many journeys were relatively short, and local. As a great deal of work has shown in recent years, the early modern population was surprisingly mobile. People travelled from parish to parish, and from rural to urban areas as they visited market towns to buy and sell goods. Perhaps the majority of journeys were taken on foot, on horseback or on a cart or, for those with means, in small carriages. By the later eighteenth century, post carriages were also available to private passengers.

William Hogarth, ‘The Stage Coach’ – Image from Wikimedia Commons

But travel of any kind was a risky business. Roads were proverbially poor, often deeply rutted in summer and reduced to a quagmire in winter, making journeys by foot, or by cart or carriage, uncomfortable at best. Falls from horses were common, leading to injury or death, and even a long time in the saddle could be painful. Travel by sea, even over relatively short distances, was fraught with danger, not only from the vagaries of the weather, but also the condition and seaworthiness of the vessel. Such was the discomfort caused by sea travel that sickness on the first journey by sea was regarded as almost inevitable, only abating once the body had become accustomed to the motion of the waves.  With all this in mind, then, what options for treatment could be found in early modern remedy culture?

Travelling of any kind was clearly seen as a tiring and enervating process, and something to which the body needed time to adjust to. Some hints of this process can be found in travel-related terms in dictionaries. The term ‘travel-tainted’ was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV, and was defined by Samuel Johnson as one who was ‘harrassed or fatigued with travel’. To be ‘unwayed’ was to be unused to travel, as opposed to a ‘wayfaring man’ who, according to John Kersey’s 1658 dictionary, was one ‘accustomed to travel in the roads’. The use of the word ‘accustomed’ suggests again a process of acclimatisation. The advice of the Sick Man’s Jewel in 1674 was that ‘such that are weary by travel or labour’ should chew tobacco in the evening, whilst Leonardo Fioravanti recommended the juice of Rose Solis to those ‘who are wearied with travell’.

A Weary Traveller, 1815 – Copyright Wellcome Images

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a variety of remedies can be found to treat sore feet. Robert Turner’s, Botanologia the Brittish physician, or, the nature and vertues of English plants advocated anointing feet with the herbs ‘ladies bedstraw or gallium’ before they undertook a journey. There was even a term for this: to ‘surbate’ was to ‘batter the feet with long travel’! Turner noted that the herb mugwort ‘is excellent good to bathe the surbated Feet of Footmen and Lackies in hot weather’, admirably giving some consideration to footsore servants.

For anyone suffering from pain and discomfort caused travelling by horseback, some potential relief could be found. Andrew Boorde’s 1587, The breuiarie of health contained a remedy for galling or chafing caused by ‘riding upon an evill horse in a naughtie saddle’. His suggestion was to ‘rub, anoint or grease the place aggrieved’ with a tallow candle…perhaps not a situation you would wish to walk in on! If the unfortunate chafed traveller possessed a pair of particularly large buttocks, Boorde suggested that rubbing between the cheeks with olive oil might be a useful expedient. 

It is harder to trace specific conditions relating to coach travel, but the health dangers of being squashed into a confined space, breathing in the noisome air and odours of fellow passengers, whilst simultaneously being joggled, bumped and bounced around for hours, was a well-known hazard – particularly into the eighteenth century. The term ‘coach sick’ appears occasionally and was regarded as occurring from the ‘swimmings in the head’ that could accompany violent motion. Some physicians advocated opening the windows to constantly refresh the air; others suggested opium!

Whilst sea travel was less common outside naval and commercial purposes, medical authors did offer some suggestions for the alleviation of sea sickness. In his 1667 Treasures of Physick, John Tanner viewed sea travel as one of the key ‘external’ causes of vomiting and advocated a range of treatments including laudanum, vegetable and herbal oils and syrups.  As John Moyle noted, in his 1684 Abstract of sea chirurgery, it was not uncommon for the abject misery of constant puking to be accompanied by the discomfort of constipation: he claimed to have ‘known some who in a whole week together have not gone to stool’. Moyle’s solution for those who were ‘sea sick and vomit much’ was a gentle purge or, failing that, a ‘clyster’, or enema.

‘Seasickness’ by G.S. Treagar – Image from Wikimedia Commons

As ever in the early modern medical marketplace, where there was demand there was likely a crafty quack chasing a fast shilling. Travel-related conditions were common amongst the efficacy puffs for proprietary pills and medicines. In 1670 the ‘English Pills for the Scurvy’ claimed to be extremely useful for sea travellers, standing them ‘in great stead in all Sea-sicknesses’, as well as ‘sickly Climates or Seasons; Calentures, Fevers, Fluxes, Poysons, Agues, Surfeits, and the like Scorbutick Diseases, which so commonly afflict such as go to Sea’. John Archer’s ‘Chymical Drops’ were of ‘great use to travellers’ in curing sickness, whilst ‘he that useth [John Headrich’s Traveller’s Salt] on the Sea Vomits not’. There are many more similar examples, and plenty more still to find. 

Health and medicine were, as they still are, then, central to travel. Even the few examples given here are revealing about the supposed effects that travel was seen to have on the body, along with the approaches taken to mitigate them. I am very much looking forward to delving more deeply into the medical history of the travelling body.  

The Health Risks of Travel in Early-Modern Britain

As I start to make some progress on my new research project on travel, health and risk I am turning my attention to the sorts of things that early modern travellers were fearful of. As a bit of a nervous traveller myself, it’s quite comforting to know that there is actually a long history of travel-related anxiety.

From the early modern period, domestic and international travel were beginning to increase due to many factors including commercial expansion and the Atlantic economy, religion and mission work, military and diplomacy, as well as technological developments and the growth of travel infrastructure. For the first time in history, large numbers of travellers were beginning to explore both their own countries and wider world, encountering new countries, environments, and peoples.

Unlike today, when it’s entirely possible to have breakfast in London, lunch in Milan and be back at home in time for supper, travel in the early modern period was no easy undertaking. More than this, it was widely acknowledged to be inherently dangerous. What, then, were the perceived risks? Even a brief survey tells us a lot about how travel was regarded in health terms.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

First was the risk of accident or death on the journey. In the seventeenth century even relatively short distances on horseback or in a carriage carried dangers. Falls from horses were common, causing injury or even death. As Roy Porter noted, when the wife of Justinian Paget was thrown from her horse in October 1638,  it was said to be the ‘cause of all her future sickness’. In Monmouthshire in 1657, one Francis Bradford was killed as his horse bolted, throwing him over its neck with his feet caught in the stirrups. ‘His wyfe was with hym and she presentlie alighted from her horse and cryed for helpe’. Many drownings occurred as people tried to cross rivers on horseback and fell in or were swept away. 

JMW Turner ‘The Shipwreck’ – Image from Wikimedia Commons

Travel by sea, even around local coasts, carried its own obvious risks of storm and wreck. So common and widely acknowledged were the vagaries of sea travel that a common reason for making a will in the early modern period was just before embarking on a voyage. The language used in these formulations is telling. In 1638, Edward Harthorpe, Richard Veesey, Michael March and Thomas Huckleton, ‘with divers others’, made their will, ‘being bound to take a voyage to Canady (sic) in America, w(hi)ch being a daingerous voyage, and they putting theire lives to hazard therein, did consider their mortalitie’.

This was a common theme, and the prospect of the impending journey, and the not-unreasonable assumption that they might not return, led many to consider putting their affairs in order. This anxiety was neatly articulated by Thomas Youngs in 1663, ‘Being bound upon a voyage to sea, and calling to remembrance the uncertain state of this transitory life, and that all fleshe must yielde undo death…’. One intent on the journey, travellers wanted to be prepared in body and soul.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Once abroad, too travellers were at the mercy of a bevy of dangers, from unfamiliar territories and extreme landscapes to harsh weather and climate, their safety contingent on the quality of their transport and the reliability of their guides. In 1793 Useful Instructions for Travellers contained chapters advising travellers as to how to deal with the many and various dangers to life and health that they might face. These included the necessity to frequently open carriage windows to refresh the air, the need to take a small medicine chest to attend to wounds (including falls from horseback), and various preparations to treat the haemorrhoids that often accompanied long periods in a sitting position.

Knowledge of the conditions, climates and environments of intended destinations was also key. Ideally, a traveller should be able to ‘cure himself of some distempers’, be wary of the change of air and the hazards of the journey, and to take their own store of medicines in case they were hard to procure once abroad.

But some even considered the whole process of travel itself to be potentially harmful to the body. Even in the sixteenth century, ‘The Hospitall for the Diseased, wherein are to bee founde moste excellent and approued medicines’ included a list of things considered bad for the heart. As well as what the author viewed as deadly vegetables such as beans, peas and leeks, further heart problems might be caused by ‘too much travell’, or even ‘drink[ing] cold water after travell’. Similarly, in a section about things that are ‘ill for the brain, A.T.’s 1596 A.T., A rich store-house or treasury for the diseased  noted “Overmuch heate in Trauaylinge”.

Scurvy was another condition firmly linked to travel. In 1609, Petrus Pomarius’, Enchiridion medicum viewed scurvy as an occupational hazard for ‘those that trauell by sea, by long voyages; and our fishers that travel to the Newfound-lands’. As well as the perils of the long journey, the problems could arise due to the ‘stincking waters, & especially in an hot aire’ that travellers were exposed to. Climate – and particularly heat – was considered risky. In the 1793 Etmullerus abridg’d: or, a compleat system of the theory and practice of physic, Michael Etmuller stated that travelling in a hot climate could cause wakefulness and perturbation of the mind.

Even ‘foreign’ food and drink could be risky. Thomas Tryon’s Miscellania (1696) noted the dangers of ‘intemperance’ and of misjudging the effects of climate upon the body in regard to drinking alchohol. According to Tryon, many English travellers were ‘much Distemper’d, and many die when they Travel into the West and East Indies, because they take wrong measures, continuing the same disorder and intemperance as they did in their own Country’.

Travel, then, was a risky business, and one that individuals would not have undertaken lightly. There were a range of factors to consider, from basic risks of life and death to the dangers of particular conditions and climates, food and illness. 

Unnatural Fashions: Wigs and Beards in the 18th Century.

I’m showing my age now, but watch the 1981 Adam and the Ants promo video for ‘Stand and Deliver’ and, during a few scenes showing the ‘Dandy Highwaymen’ amongst a group of outlandishly-dressed Georgians, look closely and you may notice a strange figure in the background…a man wearing a powdered period wig…and a beard. A wig and a beard. Together. On one man. It’s a look that should never be seen on any man. And, indeed, it was likely not a combination worn by any self-respecting polite Georgian gentleman. As the wig grew in popularity, the beard dramatically declined.

Initially there had been objections to the wig on religious grounds. In the seventeenth century, Puritan objections to the beard centred upon meddling with the divine form that God had created. The puritan polemicist William Prynne argued that replacing an individual’s own hair with the ‘hairie excrements of some other person’ was akin to denying the perfection of God’s work.  Here he was referring to the fact that hair was, in medical terms, regarded as a type of excrement – a waste product of the body caused by inner heat rising up and breaking out on the surface of the skin, much like soot up a chimney. But clean-shaven puritans clearly saw no irony in the fact that they had removed their own ‘hairie excrements’ in the form of the beard which God had presumably provided for them.

There were also tensions in religious tracts between notions of the wig as, on the one hand, a covering and, on the other, a form of display. The wig-wearer could simultaneously be accused of hiding their true features, and drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. Contemporary opponents to the wig also claimed that it altered gender perceptions of the body, confusing the appearance of the whole. Even despite these objections, wigs continued to go from strength to strength.

Hair, whether on the head or the face, was in fact a central component in the articulation of masculinity. The way that head hair was worn and styled was important. At some points, long hair was desirable but, at others, it was kept short and close cropped. Here again, Puritans were advocates of the short cut. The wig added an extra layer of complexity, in requiring the removal of the wearer’s own hair, and substituting it for the ‘dead’ hair of someone else.

Like head hair, fashions in beards waxed and waned throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The beard was considered a central component of manliness, one that demonstrated virility and manly vigour. The bigger the beard the better. By the last decades of the seventeenth century, though, facial hair had diminished in size to the short ‘Stiletto’ style of the Stuarts. By 1700 most men were going clean shaven.

On the surface, the virtually simultaneous decline of facial hair and rising popularity of wigs in the second half of the seventeenth century appears coincidental. Contemporary sources are frustratingly quiet on the nature of the relationship between beards and wigs. There were, for example, no fashion guides advising men to lose the beard and don the wig. One obvious conclusion is simply that there was no connection, and that fashions had simply shifted.

There were certainly similarities in terms of the prosthetic nature of both wigs and beards. Both could easily be adopted, put on and taken off at need. Both were manageable according to fashion, and both bore connections with masculinity, albeit in different ways. Why, then, did beards and wigs seem to be so incompatible?

One issue was simply the jarring aesthetic that the wig/beard combination created. Wigs and moustaches? Possibly. But wigs and beards, no. The wig was intended to contribute to a neat, elegant and harmonious whole – the goal of the polite gentleman. It was a fashion statement; one that shouted ‘status’ and rank. Later in the century there were complaints that wigs had sunk so far down the social scale that they were in danger of losing their potency as social markers. Facial hair, by contrast, had become seriouslyunpopular. In part this was because it came to symbolise roughness and earthiness, a component of the poor, country labourer, rather than the metropolitan gent. The two did not belong together.

Mixing beards and wigs also risked an odd clash between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ hair. Wigs were artificial contrivances. An individual removed their own ‘natural’ hair and replaced it with something fashioned from the frowzy hair of the poor. Conversely, as many authors had spent the previous two centuries arguing, beards were ‘natural’ – a God-given component of the male body. But men were increasingly having their beards scraped off, leaving the face clear. Perhaps part of the issue, then, lay in covering.  Head hair was removed but the head re-covered by the wig. Beard hair, by contrast, was shaved, but not replaced. In this sense, the ‘site’ of masculinity shifted from the face to the upper head, with the head covered, and the countenance open.

A further possibility, although perhaps less plausible, was the so-called ‘cult of youth’ which, amongst other things, encouraged smoothness and softness of skin as aesthetic ideals. Beards, and even stubble, could be scythed off with a newly-fashionable steel razor, giving a man soft and smooth skin. He might even slather on some of the many pastes, lotions and oils that were coming on to the market in the eighteenth century. The wig, though, could contribute to the illusion of youth, by giving an apparently luxuriant head of hair.

Whatever the true reasons, the wig and beard were uncomfortable bedfellows. There are very few formal portraits of bearded men in the eighteenth century. Those that do exist are usually paintings of older men, for whom the beard was a sign of wisdom and experience, and sometimes Biblical figures. But, we would struggle to find a painting of a bearded and bewigged gentleman! Some things, it seems, simply do not belong together.

 

‘Gymnasticks’ and Dumbbells: Exercise in early modern Britain

As we begin to draw near to the end of the Olympics, questions will probably begin to be asked about the ‘legacy’ of the games, and how far they will inspire people to take up sport and exercise. After the 2012 London games, a report noted that 1.4 million more people in Britain had taken up a regular sport since the UK had won its bid to host in 2005. In fact, as the British Olympic team return to the UK next week, the broadcaster ITV and the National Lottery are planning ‘nation’s biggest sports day, the former switching off all of its channels for an hour, to encourage people to follow in the footsteps of Team GB, and take up sports.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Exercise is now deeply entrenched in British culture. Last year the Guardian reported that spending on gym membership was up by 44%, whilst a host of new sports (including open water swimming) along with things like running clubs and organised park runs, was painting a picture of ‘a nation of gym goers’. How many of these new devotees fell by the wayside a couple of weeks after their New Year’s resolution is not, unfortunately, recorded!

We might think of the concept of exercise, and particularly as an aide to health, as a thoroughly modern invention. In fact though, (leaving to one side the original, ancient, Olympic games!) it has a long history.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, the importance of exercise was well known. Popular perceptions of the ‘plague doctors and leeches’ aspect of early modern medicine obscure what was in fact a sophisticated and logical system of understanding the body. Much emphasis is often laid upon ‘weird’ remedies whilst, in reality, prevention was viewed as vastly preferable to cure. A great deal of importance was attached to the concept of ‘regimen’; this was effectively a holistic system for wellbeing, encompassing sleep, rest, eating as well as exercise.

Medical self-help books extolled the virtues of exercise, and in particular motion, as a means to keep the body healthy. Alexander Spraggot’s Treatise of Urine recommended that those in sedentary positions (especially students) needed to keep moving in order to avoid the dangerous settling accumulation of foul humours. Some recommended walking, others riding.

For A.B, author of the 1611 Sick Man’s Jewel, ‘Exercise ought to be moderate, nei|ther too gentle, nor too vehement, neither too quick, nor too slow.’ The activity should be vigorous enough to get the ‘benefit of motion’, to make the face florid and for ‘hot vapours[…] to break forth’. Exercise was considered useful in treating conditions such as Scurvy and diseases of the liver. It also prevented the accumulation of ‘gross, vicious humours, heaped up in the body’. It should never be too vigorous, however, since this could deplete the vital spirits. Neither should exercise be undertaken straight after food.

(image from Google Books)

In 1711 Francis Fuller published an entire book devoted to the ‘power of exercise’. For Fuller, a life spent in lazy, supine repose was dangerous. For the body to be vigorous and vital it needed continual stimulus, ‘since the vigour of the parts is acquir’d by use’. Exercise was therefore vital since it ‘promotes the digestion, raises the spirits, refreshes the mind and strengthens and relieves the whole man’.

But what sorts of exercise was involved? Fuller was vague. ‘By Exercise, then, I understand all that motion or agitation of the Body of what kind ‘soever’. Promisingly, for those who set the bar low, he considered both hiccoughing and laughing as legitimate forms of exercise. The ‘best and noblest of all exercises for a sick person’ was riding. It was both an active and passive exercise, combining movement and the automatic stretching of limbs. For the more energetic, tumbline and rope-dancing offered a good means to get the perspiration flowing.

(Final set tie-break, 17th-century style! Image from Wikimedia commons)

In 1794, in his book on the science of muscular action, John Pugh separated exercise into various degrees. The strongest of these were ‘tennis, cricket, fencing running &c, where great muscular action is necessary’. Next down were activities including walking, riding on horseback or in a carriage and, rather confusingly, reading aloud. In the third category was sailing.

As the eighteenth century progressed, the increasing fixation upon ‘machines’ offered new possibilities for shaping the body. The use of artificial weights was one, perhaps surprising, means by which to exercise. The origin of the term ‘dumbbell’ was actually literal – it referred to the swinging of weights resembling bells with their clappers removed. Philip Jones’ 1788 ‘Essay on Crookedness’ commented on ‘swinging the dumb bells’ as a means to cure spinal distortion and ‘crookedness’. Whilst Jones recognised that some success had been obtained, he was keener on the new trend for sea bathing as a means to keep the body in good order. To promote good posture, the physician James Parkinson advocated exercising with dumb bells, and horse riding. Anticipating 21^st century ideas about the healthiness of gardening, however, he also suggested ‘the culture of a flower garden’!

(Copyright Lewis Walpole Digital Image Collection)

Also popular was the ‘chamber horse’ – a chair with a bellows mechanism in which the ‘rider’ sat and then, through the power of the bellows, bounced up and down. For a great post and image of the ‘chamber horse’ on the ‘Two Nerdy History Girls’ blog, click here.

Riding the wave of popularity for ‘gymnastic’ exercise, some enterprising Georgian artisans began to create and patent new equipment. The London merchant Abraham Buzaglo made his name as a maker of patent stoves in the second half of the eighteenth century. But, Buzaglo also used his metallurgical expertise to diversify into other areas. In February 1779 he lodged a patent for a device for ‘Muscular health and strength restoring exercise by the means of machines, instruments and necessaries for practising the same. The apparatus involved a system of plates, bags and poles, attached to the wall, to exercise the limbs. They were especially recommended for the treatment of gout. A contemporary satire depicts the use of ‘gymnastick’ equipment by ‘gouty persons’.

(Copyright Wellcome Images: Three men wearing orthopaedic apparatus, by Paul Sandby)

So as the final events take place in Rio, and perhaps as you lace up your shoes and head for the weights rack, inspired, you’re actually following in the footsteps of health-conscious early modern people, for whom exercise was an important part of health and regimen. It’s interesting to note, for example, the long and close relationship between exercise and health, rather than just recreation. Often the key element has been that of movement or motion. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, motion was needed to prevent an accumulation of foul humours or, in a sense, to prevent the body stagnating. Little has actually changed. The tagline of the Government’s current UKActive programme is… “let’s get moving”!

Fowl Medicine: The early modern ‘pigeon cure’

In October 1663 news spread around London that Queen Catherine was gravely ill. Fussed over by a gaggle of physicians and priests, things got so bad that Her Majesty was even given extreme unction in the expectation that she might not pull through. In an effort to turn things around, as Samuel Pepys noted in his diary on the 19^th October, “pigeons were put to her feet”. In another diary entry in 1667, Pepys recorded visiting the dying husband of Kate Joyce who was in his sick bed, his breath rattling in his throat. Despairing (for good reason) for his life his family “did lay pigeons to his feet while I was in the house”.

(Image from Wikipedia)

Pigeons? Laid to the feet? Was Pepys mistaken, or was there a misunderstanding of his complicated shorthand? Actually, pigeons were a surprisingly common ‘ingredient’ in medicine and were even recommended for various conditions in the official pharmacopoeia (catalogue) of sanctioned remedies. But what were they used for, and how?

Remedies for the treatment of the plague certainly called for the use of pigeons. No less a publication than the London Pharmocopoeia issued by the College of Physicians in 1618, contained a remedy for the plague which involved pulling off the feathers of living pigeons, holding their bills shut and holding the bare patch to the plague sore “until they die and by this means draw out the poison”.

William Kemp’s 1665 ‘Brief Treatise of the Nature and Cure of the Pestilence’ noted that some writers advised cutting a pigeon open, and applying it (still hot) to the spine of a person afflicted with melancholy, or to a person of weak intellect. The English Huswife of 1615 advised those infected with the plague to try applying hot bricks to the feet and, if this didn’t work, “a live pidgeon cut in two parts”. Even the by-products of pigeons could come in useful. Physicians treating the ailing Charles II applied a plaster to his feet containing pigeon dung.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Several sources suggest that the ‘pigeon cure’ was often a remedy of last resort. Writing of the last illness of her father in 1707 (dying of a “broken heart, which the physicians called a feaver”, Alice Thornton reported that, just before his death, pigeons were cut and laid to the soles of his feet. Seeing this her father smiled and said “Are you come to the last remedy? But I shall prevent your skill”. The diarist John Evelyn, in the ‘Life of Mrs Godolphin’ noted that ‘Neither the cupping, nor the pidgeons, those last of remedyes [my emphasis], wrought any effect’.

The ‘cure’ was evidently so popular that it made its way into popular culture, such as in Webster’s ‘Duchess of Malfi’. Speaking to the ‘Old Lady’, the character Bosola says that he would “sooner eate a dead pidgeon, taken from the soles of the feete of one sicke of the plague, than kiss one of you fasting”.

What were the perceived medical benefits of the pigeon and its various products? Some prominent physicians had plenty to say on the matter. William Salmon’s Pharmacopoeia Londonensis, Or the New London Dispensatory in 1716, (p. 200) held that “cut in the middle and laid to the feet, [pigeons] abate the heat of burning fevers, though malignant, and so laid to the Head, takes away Headaches, Frenzy, Melancholy and Madness. On the matter of pigeon dung, Dr Alleyne’s Dispensatory of 1733 stated that “we may judge of the nature of this [dung] from that of the birds…consists of subtle hot parts, which open the pores where it is applied, and by rarifying and expanding them, occasion a greater flux of fluid that way”. In other words the hot dung caused the body to open its pores and expel the bad humours causing the illness.

Saint Gregory (and a pigeon!) – image from Wikimedia Commons

The particular significance of the pigeon is interesting too. One hint is given by the apparently strong connections in folklore between the pigeon and death, ranging from the belief that pigeons flying near a person – or indeed landing on their chimney – were supposed to indicate approaching death, to the “common superstition” (recorded in 1890) that no one can die happy on a bed of pigeon’s feathers. The symbolic power of the pigeon may therefore have been applied in reverse. Killing the bird perhaps imparted its vital power onto the dying person. Beliefs in the power of ‘anima’ – the vital life spirit – being able to be transferred from animals to humans were common in the early modern period.

If some of this seems like it belongs firmly to the 17^th century, it is worth mentioning that the ‘pigeon cure’ was still apparently in use in Europe in the 20^th century. A fleeting and poignant reference in Notes and Queries refers to a woman in Deptford in 1900, who unsuccessfully attempted to use the cure on her infant son when the medical attendant pronounced that there was no hope for him. He died shortly afterwards of pneumonia.

An article in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1900, though, reported that a Paris physician was casually told by one of his patients that she had “tried the pigeon cure for meningitis”, with some success. The physician, one Dr Legue, expressed his ignorance of the cure, and the patient described it to him.

“The head of the patient to be treated is shaved, and then the breast of the (freshly-killed) pigeon is ripped open by the operator, and the warm and bleeding carcass immediately applied to the bared skull”.

More than this, Dr Legue apparently discovered a shop in the city’s Central Market, where a Madame Michel ran a shop selling nothing but live pigeons, specifically for the purpose of the cure. On interviewing Madam Michel, the good doctor ascertained that she was on the point of retirement after making a “small fortune” from her business, since “the pigeon cure is considered a sovereign remedy for Influenza”, and she had been struggling to keep up with demand. The term ‘sovereign remedy’ takes us straight back to the 17^th century but, before the article finished, Madam Michel mentioned one last use for the pigeons. In the case of Typhoid fever, she suggested, two pigeons were necessary. And they should be tied to the soles of the feet.

(Wikimedia Commons)

As uncomfortable as they might sometimes appear to our eyes, early modern medicine involved all manner of plants, animals and substances, alive or dead. Rather than viewing them as ‘weird’, people at the time saw them as valuable ingredients, often with special properties, which they could use to help them in the fight against disease.

Nendick’s Pill: Selling Medicine in Rural Britain

(Anon, ‘Quacksalber’ – image from Wikimedia Commons)

Even as late as the 1970s it was largely assumed that people in rural England and Wales had little contact with medical practitioners or medicines for sale. As such, they were portrayed as being reliant upon ‘irregular’ practitioners such as charmers and cunning folk, and forced to make their own ineffectual medicines from the plants, animals and substances around them.

Recent work, however, has done much to explode this notion, showing instead that people in rural Britain were actually surrounded by medical practitioners of various kinds (see my previous blog post on the subject here) and could buy a variety of ingredients from apothecary shops which, if not on their doorstep, could be found in market towns nearby. Little work has yet been done, however, on the rural medical marketplace.

When I was writing my book on medicine in seventeenth-century Wales (a rural area if ever there was one!) I wanted to look at medicines for sale, and medicines advertised. In seventeenth-century London medical advertising proliferated. All manner of medical entrepreneurs took advantage of cheap print to peddle their wares to sickly Londoners, deploying tactics still familiar to advertisers today.

But how did this process work in areas far outside London? Did medical practitioners, and sellers of proprietary (ready-made) remedies even bother with the provinces? In fact, as I discovered for Wales, adverts for medicines reached far across the country, and remedy sellers and makers took advantage of local contacts to market their products.

A useful case in point is that of ‘Nendick’s Popular Pill’. Nendick was a London practitioner, described across various sources as a doctor, barber-surgeon, surgeon and ‘empiric’. He was based at the White Ball Inn, near to St Paul’s Churchyard. (For anyone interested in unusual wills, his final testament -National Archives PROB 11/496 – was virtually a mini theological treatise, on which he set forth his somewhat idiosyncratic views on the last judgement and resurrection, influenced by his work on chemical medicines.)

(Image from Google Books)

Nendick published various books in his lifetime, but these were usually dedicated to promoting his ‘miraculous’ cure-all pills. In 1677, for example, he published ‘A Book of Directions and Cures done by that Safe and Successful Medicine called ‘Nendick’s Popular Pill. Although it claimed special dominion in the cure of scurvy, the book claimed that the pill cured everything from wind and cold to headaches and pimples, ‘cleansing the blood and purging gently by urine and stool’.

In line with the standard form of medical advertising for the time, the pamphlet gave detailed directions for use, a long list of claims for efficacy, and the place in London from where it could be purchased, along with warnings to customers to beware of fake pills! Perhaps more interesting, however, the pamphlet also gave a long list of sellers in towns around Britain, and even Ireland, from whom the pills could be bought. Nendick had managed to establish a network of agents around the country. These naturally included large towns like Bristol, Dartford, Plymouth and Ipswich but also much smaller market towns like Ledbury, Tenby and Kington in Somerset. Given the logistical difficulties of locating potential sellers, and maintaining supply and payment, this was an impressive undertaking.

(Image from Google Books)

Looking down the list also tells us something about the sorts of places that might sell medical remedies. Some were medical practitioners. Mr Mainstone in Monmouth was a barber surgeon; Mr Betts in Guildford, Mr Ady in Chipping Sodbury and Mr Penny in Braton were barbers, and often interchangeable with medical services. Mercers, like Mr Northcote in Plymouth, and Mr Button in Taunton, often combined their trade with that of an apothecary, and so were common suppliers of medicines. But the connection with others was less clear. What of Mr Hill of Ryegate, the shoemaker, or Mr Lunt in Ledbury, a bookseller? The pill could also be found at a distiller’s, a coffee house and an inn.

But what if people wanted to buy pills and were not near enough to one of the warranted sellers to make the journey? Nendick had this covered. For three shillings a box of thirty pills could be dispatched by post, or would happily be provided to a messenger sent by a potential customer. Medicine by post was actually fairly common in the early modern period; it was even possible to send a flask of urine to a physician to be tested if a personal consultation was not possible. The state of the bottled piss by the time it had made the journey by coach of perhaps a day or two can only be guessed at!

Another clever device used by Nendick (and others) was to use testimony from local people to assure them that this ‘foreign’ pill could work for them. Examples from Wales are a case in point.

‘A poor Woman came from Kilgarren in Wales to lie in Cardigan, to get Cure of a sore Distemper, but to compleat her misery, she was left penniless, and uncured; yet by a Box of my Pills, which were given her by Mr. Griffith in Cardigan, she was Cured; they did expel wind, brought away store of Gravel, Water, and Blood, and she returned home well, that in three years before had not had the right benefit of Nature, much more might be said…’

Whereas poor Mr Whetnal of Presteigne, a gunsmith, could scarcely sit upright, much less leave his house before sending for Nendick’s products, a few pills later and he ‘now rode about the countrey’ through the miraculous power of the pill.

It was not only Nendick who employed this tactic. ‘Dr Salmon’s Pills…so famously known throughout England’ could be found everywhere from a Monmouth apothecary to a Gloucester bookseller as could ‘Dr. Stoughton’s Elixir Magnum Stomachicum, Or, the Great Cordial Elixir’, made by the Surrey apothecary Richard Stoughton and ‘Bromfield’s Pills’.

(Image from the Anderson-Harvard Theological Library http://hdslibrary.tumblr.com/post/123373454944/who-knew-we-had-a-pamphlet-on-scurvy-spoiler)

Sometimes, though, the relationship could go wrong, as it did with Charles Taylor of the Kings Arms in Monmouth. Taylor was an agent for Anthony Daffy’s famous ‘Daffy’s Elixir’, a cure-all popular from the late seventeenth century. It seems that Taylor enthusiastically ordered a large stock of elixir to sell to his eager Welsh customers, but proved less enthusiastic in paying for them, leading to a lawsuit!

What these advertisements show, though, is that London medicines could be bought all across the country, in large and small towns alike. People from rural areas had ready access to them and, importantly, from local shopkeepers that they knew. The fact that they could read testimonials by locals – perhaps even neighbours – reinforced the safety and efficacy of the remedy. Also even if they could not get to town they even had the option to send for the pills by post. All of this reminds us that people in the past were by no means as cut off from medical provision as they were traditionally portrayed to be. Like us, they had access to a variety of medical goods, services and choices.

**(The full academic article I wrote on this topic in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine is available free on Open Access here)**

Touching the Past: Why History Is Important?

I was talking to a colleague recently about what first got us fired up about history. I’ve loved history since childhood, and it was probably inevitable that it would end up as a career. As an undergraduate, though, I vividly remember a turning point – a brilliant lecture I attended on life in the South Wales coalfields, which began with an image of a miners’ protest in the early 20^th century. The lecturer began with a simple question: ‘what was it like to be there?’ He went on to talk about the men, the town and environment, the sights and smells and the conditions they lived in, bringing it all vividly to life.

But why does history matter? What is the ‘point’ of history? What is the value of humanities in a modern society? Depressingly, these are questions that historians increasingly have to face, and face them we do. A recent post by Laura Sangha gives a great response to just these sorts of questions.

Despite abundant evidence of the public appetite for ‘popular’ history, academic historians are under constant pressure to defend our discipline in the face of threats to funding, the need to recruit students and bring in research income. Sometimes it is easy not only to lose touch with why history matters, but what it was that got us enthused about it in the first place. For me, though, a chance encounter in an antiquarian bookshop in London last week has gone a long way towards bringing back the excitement I first felt when I first became interested in the past, and the people who inhabited it.

I wasn’t even to go in to the shop. But, with a little time to kill before lunch, I wandered in, and asked the owner if he had a section on health and medicine. He looked apologetic and said he had a few on some shelves at the back of the shop, but “mostly vintage stuff’”. What he actually had were two bookcases full of treasures; all manner of 17^th and 18^th-century medical and surgical treatises, histories of the body, anatomical works, medical lectures, books of remedies and pharmacopoeia…for a historian of medicine, a little shop of dreams!

One, in particular, caught my eye – an original 1667 copy of John Tanner’s Hidden Treasures of the Art of Physick. I pondered for a little while about whether to buy it…I’ve long worried about buying these old books (especially from places like Ebay) and whether it is right to own something that should ideally be in a museum. But, before long, it was coming home with me!

Unwrapping the book from its packaging at home gave me time to look at it in detail, but also to reflect on the incredible journey that it’s had. More than that it reminded me of exactly why I fell in love with history in the first place. Here, on my desk, next to me now in fact, is a tangible artefact – a survivor from another world.

(Thomas Wyck – ‘Old St Paul in Ruins’, Image from Wikimedia Commons)

It rolled off the press in Clerkenwell, London one day in 1667, in a city still in shock after the dual calamities of the plague and the Great Fire of the previous year. What would an imaginary visitor to London that year have seen? Everywhere were burnt-out buildings, piles of rubble and devastated streets still in the process of being cleared. In January that year Samuel Pepys noted that there were still ‘smoking remains of the late fire’ with ‘the ways mighty bad and dirty’. Even as late as the 28^th of February Pepys was still having trouble sleeping because of ‘great terrors about the fire’, and observed ‘smoke still remaining of the late fire’ in the City. On the skyline was the devastated, but still recognisable, symbol of old London – the first St Paul’s Cathedral, whilst the once noted sea of church spires across London was diminished. Clerkenwell itself, however, largely escaped the fire. It was a fairly upmarket area, containing some affluent houses and businesses. Clerkenwell green was a fashionable area, home to some of the nobility.

What, then, of the book’s author and publishers? John Tanner who, according to the blurb, was a ‘student of physick and astrology’ wrote it. In fact, Tanner was a practising physician who resided in Kings Street, Westminster. In other sources he was referred to as a ‘dr in physic’ and a ‘medicus’, possibly even a member of the Royal College of Physicians in February 1675. When he died in 1711, Tanner had done pretty well for himself, leaving gold, silver and money, together with valuable goods, to his children. In his house, according to his inventory, were a ‘Physick room, Chirurgery room and still house’, the last used to distil waters for medicinal use. Tanner was the author of ‘my’ book, but he likely never touched it.

Someone who potentially had more to do with the physical book, however, was its publisher John Streater, a prolific producer of medical texts and brother of Aaron Streater, a noted physician and ‘divine’. Streater often worked in tandem with the bookseller George Sawbridge ‘at his House on clerken-well-Green’. Sawbridge was an eminent bookseller and publisher of medical books by luminaries such as Nicholas Culpeper. According to Elias Ashmole, Sawbridge had been a friend of the ‘English Merlin’ (or the ‘Juggling Wizard and Imposter’, depending on your source!) William Lilly. When he died, Sawbridge was worth around £40,000 – a colossal amount of money in the seventeenth century. It’s not too much of a leap of imagination to picture Sawbridge in his shop, surrounded by shelves and shelves of leather and calf-bound volumes, handing the book over to its first owner.

Who owned it? It’s impossible to say, but let’s speculate. A book like Tanner’s Treasury was meant for a general readership. It’s aim was to help the ‘diligent reader’ attain a good understanding of physick and the body, synthesising a range of different authors. Its medical content might have made it appealing as an easy reference work for a medical practitioner, but far more likely is that it found its way into the library of a local gentleman…perhaps even one of the Clerkenwell nobility who lived hard by. Medical texts were common inclusions amongst the libraries of gentlemen; medicine was one of the accepted intellectual pursuits of elite men. In fact there is only one signature inside the book, which is now, sadly illegible. Only the word ‘boak’ (book) and the date 1726 are now discernible, but show that it was still being used, or at least referred to, at that date. There is also only one slightly unclear annotation, which appears to say ‘used above [unclear] but are fare’. I’ve included the image below.

This copy of Tanner’s Treasury has had a long journey to this point. It has been passed down – perhaps gifted, bequeathed, sold, resold, lent, scores of times. At some point it ended up in a Birmingham library, and was potentially read by countless scholars, before its journey took it back to where it began – a London bookseller, where an interested party (me!) couldn’t leave it on the shelf. Rest assured that it’s found a good home, and will be carefully looked after.

To me, things like this little book are the reasons I love doing what I do. To be sure, the contents are important, giving us a window into the medical worldview of the time, and the sorts of individuals practising, writing and publishing medicine. The remedies are fascinating (and indeed one of my academic research interests). But there’s more to it than that. The book itself lets us literally touch the past and make contact with an object that was actually there. The people who wrote, sold, bought and passed it on have long gone, but we can still hold and appreciate something that was once important to them. It’s a line of direct contact back through the centuries. For all the academic theorising about grand narratives, discourses, theories and the rest, it’s nice to be reminded now and again of the simple, visceral thrill of letting a source fire up your imagination of what it was like in the past.

And that is why I think history is important.

 

 

 

Robbing the Doctor: 17th-Century Medics as Victims of Crime

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a common complaint against medical practitioners was that they effectively picked the pockets of the sick, whilst doing little for them in return. As the Helmontian physician George Starkey remarked in the middle of the seventeenth century, the patient was “like to pay the price of the doctor fully with his life” – which Starkey regarded as a brave acte’!

But medics, just like anyone else, could sometimes be victims of crime. The records of the Old Bailey contain a fascinating list of these unfortunate practitioners, and the list of crimes and calumnies they suffered. More than this, however, they can offer an alternative glimpse into the world of early modern medical practice.

(Old Bailey in the 19th century – image from Wikimedia Commons)

Sometimes, for example, physicians and other practitioners found themselves the victims of petty crime. In 1686, Edward Newgent of St Clement Danes pinched the periwig of an unnamed ‘Doctor of Physick’. The good doctor testified that he had been walking along the street in the evening, when the assailant whipped off his hat and wig, and pelted away down the street with them. The doctor gave chase and had the thief arrested. For this seemingly innocuous crime, the unlucky Newgent was sentenced to death!

Another victim of circumstance was Richard Allen of Holborn. In 1675, hearing a disturbance in the street, Allen, ‘by profession a Sea-Chirurgeon’, opened his door and was attacked by a mob (including bayliffs on the hunt for a person to serve a writ). Allen, was set upon by the men, ‘they hacking and hewing him without any mercy, that they left him dead upon the place’. So ‘mortal and dangerous’ were his wounds, that a ‘good part of his skull was taken clean off’.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

At other times, the medicines or very tools of their trade might be targets for thieves. Surgeons, and their instruments, seem to have been a particular target. Instruments, especially high end examples, could be expensive and decorous, and were therefore worth taking. Consider the case of William Marriott, surgeon, whose house was broken into in October 1693 by the terrible trio of Batson, Dando and Bedford, ‘about 3 o’clock in the morning in a rude manner’. Swearing ‘great oaths’ and ‘offering to send his Soul to Hell’ they relieved him of £42 in cash, a gold locket and ‘a pair of forceps val. 4s, and other surgeons instruments besides’. All were acquitted.

March 1679 saw a “mischievous youth” slip into a barber-surgeon’s shop and observing that the barber was in another room, he made off with a “case of instruments, most of them tipt with Silver”. Crime didn’t pay for the errant youth; he was burnt in the hand for his trouble. A trio of thieves also relieved a London practitioner Peter Hillery of a “case of Chirurgeon’s Instruments” along with his sword. Hillery testified that he was “drinking in a Brandy shop” with one of the thieves, when he found the items missing. Quite why he felt the need to take his instruments to the pub with him is, unfortunately, not recorded.

(Image from Lewis Walpole Library)

Accosted by the highway robber, Daniel White, one John Delaphont was forced to stand and deliver ‘two boxes of surgical instruments, together with his hat, coat and shirt!

As well as the crimes themselves, some cases offer us a view into the world of what might be termed ‘irregular’ or ‘unorthodox’ practice. The descriptions of individuals are sometimes telling. In October 1679, for example, “several Bottels of a medicine called Elixar Vite” (otherwise known as ‘elixir vitae’ – a strong distilled water) were stolen from “a very ancient Itallian Gentel Man who has long professed Physick in this Kingdom”. The Italian was Salvator Winter, one of a string of European itinerant practitioners, who toured Britain in the mid seventeenth century, peddling their wares. In other sources, Winter was described as a ‘medical licentiate’, and signed letters testimonial to the skill of other practitioners. The servant of the unfortunate Winter was indicted, but later acquitted.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Another ‘unorthodox’ practitioner named Blagrave – “a pretender to physick” was relieved of a “Gold chain, a Medal, divers pieces of plate, several rich Cloaths, some Money &c”. The richness of the pickings from Blagrave highlights what a lucrative profession the practice of medicine could potentially be. To possess this level of goods suggested a man of means.

It wasn’t all one-way traffic however. As the records sometimes tell, medical practitioners could sometimes be tempted away from the path of righteousness. The exotically-named Toussaint Felix Urvoy was indicted of the heinous crime of stealing three china dishes in 1760. The case was complicated since Urvoy was owed money by the complainant, and claimed the dishes had been lent to him. Another witness described him as ‘a quack doctor’ who had befriended him in a public house (a pattern seems to be emerging here!) and said he ‘had some particular nostrums by which he could cure several disorders’.

Consider, though, the cautionary tale of the surgeon Stephen Wright, born to a wealthy Irish family, given a good education, versed in arithmetic and classics and sent to Dublin to be apprenticed to a prominent Irish surgeon. All was going well until…

“Unhappily for Stephen he chose to go by the Way of London, and to acquaint himself a little with England, the Place of his Nativity, whence his Forefathers came; tho’, as he said, his Father had a pretty good Estate, besides a handsome Sum of Money in Ireland, to which he was Heir, but by his desperate Misbehaviour, he has effectually prevented his inheriting either one or the other. For some Time after his coming to England, he served a Surgeon in the Country in Surrey, and might have done well, had he kept to his Business and been industrious, as he had good Education, and seemed capable of his Profession. His Friends had advanced to him 180 l. to bear his Expences at the Colleges in Paris. But he not content with that, resolved to improve this Sum, tho’ the Project he fell upon was wrong and foolish, and had no Success answerable to his Desire. In Effect he went to a Gaming-House in Covent-Garden, where in two or three Days, or at most a few Days, he lost the 180 l. designed to bear the Expence of his Travels, and then having no Money left, and not knowing what to do, but being destitute of the Grace of God, he resolved upon desperate Courses of Robbing.”

Given that so much focus is often upon the occupational lives of medical practitioners, it is interesting to see glimpses of their world through another lens. Lists of stolen items, for example, can be extremely useful in gauging what sorts of equipment physicians and surgeons owned, and where they took them. The terms by which medics were referred to and known is also revealing, not least in the colourful characters who sometimes inhabited the margins of medicine. The reason that I particularly like these records, though, is that they offer an intimate insight into the daily lives, frailties and misfortunes of a group of individuals, showing us a side of their lives not often reflected in the usual records of their medical occupation.

Beards, Masculinity and History.

The continuing popularity of beards over the past two years or so has surprised many. A mere few months after beards first became apparent, several media articles suggested that ‘peak beard’ had already been reached, and that the decline of facial hair was imminent. That was Summer 2012 and, despite repeated claims of its impending demise (some wrongly attributed to me!), the beard is still apparent as we near 2016. Several interesting things have accompanied this ‘trend’. First, it is the most sustained period of facial for around thirty years. Second, the style – the so-called ‘Hipster’ or ‘Shoreditch’ beard – may well prove to be the defining facial hair style of this generation, in a way, say, that ‘designer stubble’ recalls the rampant consumerism of Thatcher’s 80s. Furthermore, where male grooming products for men have catered for removing facial hair, a new market has emerged for beard care, including oils, moustache waxes and even beard moisturisers.

Aside from the issue of ‘how long will it last’, ‘what do beards mean’ is a common question. Indeed, it is a question that has repeatedly been asked through the centuries. The relationship between men and their facial hair is complex, but is usually closely bound up with prevailing ‘ideals’ of masculinity. At times in history the beard has represented a basic component of masculinity and manliness. Will Fisher’s work has shown how facial hair in the Renaissance formed part of medical understandings of gendered bodies, and the function of the four ‘humours’. Viewed as a waste product (in fact a type of excrement) it was seen as resulting from heat in the ‘reins’ – the area including the genitals. A thick beard thus spoke of virility and sexual potency, since it indicated the fires burning below. Not only was the beard held up as an ensign of manhood, it was a highly visible symbol of his ‘natural’ strength and authority.

“Moroni Don Gabriel de la Cueva” by Giovanni Battista Moroni (circa 1525–1578) – http://www.all-art.org/baroque/portrait1.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons –

Remarkably similar claims were made for beards in mid-Victorian Britain, when the beard made a spectacular return to favour as the ‘natural’ symbol of a man. Everyone from writers such as Dickens and Thomas Carlyle, to physicians like Mercer Adams, were enthusiastically extolling the virtues of this “badge of manly strength and beauty”. More than this, as Adams argued, a moustache was “nature’s respirator while the hair covering the jaws and throat is intended to afford warmth and protection to the delicate structures in the vicinity, especially the fauces and the larynx”. (A. Mercer Adams, ‘Is Shaving Favourable to Health?: Edinburgh Medical Journal, Dec 1861). Here again, facial hair was closely bound up with themes of masculinity, health, male appearance and conduct.

 

“Edward Bates – Brady-Handy” by Mathew Brady – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.01083. CALL NUMBER: LC-BH82- 4097 <P&P>[P&P]. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Bates_-_Brady-Handy.jpg#/media/File:Edward_Bates_-_Brady-Handy.jpg

The eighteenth century, however, represents something of an anomaly in the relationship between man and his beard. While much of the sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth centuries saw men wear at least some sort of facial hair, the eighteenth century has been described as the first truly beardless age in history. The exact reasons for this are unclear but, by 1750 beards, moustaches and whiskers were seriously démodé and, by 1800, the author William Nicholson was able to assert that “the caprice of fashion […] has deprived all the nations of Europe of their beards”.

In many important ways, this flight from the beard seems to run counter to what should have represented the masculine ideal. First, humoural understandings of the beard still prevailed. As such it was, at least technically, still an important component of the man. To shave it off, then, was to remove this important ‘signal’ of masculinity. Secondly, the eighteenth century was a period obsessed with the damaging effects of effeminacy in British men, not least in their ability to fight. Importantly this was not effeminacy, with its modern connotations of homosexuality, but literally becoming more feminine. Anxieties surrounded the feminising effects of Frenchified fashions upon young British men. The extreme form of new fashions was the ‘Macaroni’ – the foppish, bewigged and affected dandy. Even wigs were a source of tension in terms of their effect on male appearance. And yet, shaving the face actually rendered it more smooth and feminine.

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the apparent conflict caused by concepts of the ‘natural’. Nature underpinned the enlightenment, and much time and effort was expended in trying to uncover its meanings, and apply this to new ideals. The body was certainly part of this. Straightness in posture and deportment was considered components of the ‘natural body’. The artist Joshua Reynolds lauded the symmetry of perfect nature, suggesting the ‘Serpentine line’ of beauty, and suggesting that nature was the true model. The face was the most public of bodily surfaces, and smoothness, neatness and elegance were prized. But all of this glossed over the fact that the beard was in fact the natural state; shaving was inherently unnatural. Logically, if the beard was natural, why then get rid of it?

There are several potential reasons for the decline of the eighteenth-century beard, each of which highlights the close relationship between facial hair and contemporary ideals of masculinity. Social status certainly played a part. Whilst neatness and elegance were badges of the refined gentleman, facial hair marked out the uncouth rustic, the hermit, or the elderly derelict. This also raises the important issue of control. Just as enlightened masculinity championed rationality and manners, it also emphasised self-control as a key male feature. According to conduct literature of the time, whilst delicate ladies might blush and swoon, a man should remain in control of his senses and be measured in his emotions. The new vogue for shaving, spurred on by newly invented, sharper razors, fits this well, in terms of mastery and control over one’s own body.

Changing aesthetic ideals also fed into the freshly shorn face. The veneration of ancient sculpture, identified by George Mosse as an important element in the construction of manliness, yielded admiration at the smoothness and tactility of the stone, as well as the subjects. The obvious paradox was that many statues of Greek and Roman heroes were bearded, but this did not seem to have an effect. Coupled with this was the so called ‘cult of youth’. To affect a delicate, fey appearance was highly sought after in the later eighteenth century; shaving the face immediately rendered it more youthful.

(Image ‘Statue of a youth in heroic repose – Mostra di Nerone, – from Wikimedia Commons)

More broadly, however, the shaven face almost literally reflected enlightened ideals of openness and enquiry. Shaving opened up the countenance to the world, in turn symbolising a mind open to new possibilities. In fact it was even acknowledged that beards were inherently masculine. What mattered, though, was the ability to be able to grow one, rather than the need to actually display it.

Through history, therefore, beards have been a central issue in the construction of masculinity and sexuality, but there is no simple, linear path to how they have been construed. At some points in time the beard has been the very symbol of sexual potency, authority and power. At others, however, the clean-shaven face has prevailed. In more recent times, indeed, shaving has become part of the grooming routines of men, and still strongly linked to health and hygiene.

One of the downsides of researching a topic like facial hair is that it carries perceptions of quirkiness. How, after all, can something as basic and mundane as the beard tell us anything about history? In fact, though, beards, moustaches, whiskers and beardlessness tell us a very great deal about the ways that masculinity, gender and sexuality have all shifted through time.

Can’t Stay Moustache: Bans on Facial Hair in Medieval Ireland

In 1457 Dublin’s city council issued an ordinance that ‘men with bardys [beards] above the mowth’, as well as Irishmen and their horses and horsemen, should not be lodged within the city walls.

St Audoens and Dublin’s City Wall [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASt._Audoen’s_Church_Over_Dublin_City_Wall_and_Gate.JPG

By Eric Fischer (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons]

Men with moustaches were persona non grata in the city. At first glance, this seems a strange matter for the council to concern itself with. Most of Dublin’s civic ordinances from this period dealt with the regulation of commerce, the city’s economic life-blood, or more patently dangerous problems like fuel storage, always a concern in medieval cities due to the fire risk, the disposal of sewage, or controlling pigs, which might dig up gardens and cemeteries and even attack unattended children.

However, it seems that moustaches were considered similarly dangerous, and in 1523 Galway’s council jumped on the anti-moustache bandwagon, and ruled no man should be made a citizen ‘unlesse he can speche the Englishe tonge and shave[s] his upper lipe wickly (weekly)’.

This detail in the Galway ordinance about speaking English, and further anti-moustache enactments passed by the Irish parliament provide context for these curious moustache bans. The central problem with moustaches was that they were worn by, and associated with, the Irish. In particular, the Irish favoured a luxuriant long moustache called the crommeal. Sixteenth-century renderings show Irishmen with these moustaches, like this image by the German artist Albrecht Dürer.

[Attach JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGalloglass-circa-1521.jpg

By Альбрехт Дюрер [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

For the Irish moustache, see the three men on the right, who are, supposedly, Irish soldiers. They also wear the Irish ‘glibbs’ hairstyle, with a long fringe over the eyes.

Moustaches were banned alongside other visual signals of Irishness, like yellow saffron-dyed shirts or tunics and the hairstyle known as a cúlán. This elite Irish-warrior style entailed long-hair on the back of the head and short or shaved hair around the top and side, rather like an extreme mullet!

[Saffron tunics, Lucas de Heere, ‘Irish as they stand accoutred being at the service of the late King Henry’,  circa 1575. Public Domain (http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/16th-century-images-of-irish-people/, after Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits et ornemens divers, tant anciens que modernes, diligemment depeints au naturel par Luc Dheere peintre et sculpteur Gantois)]

The Irish parliament provided practical reasons for these bans on Irish attire and hairstyles. In 1447, for example, it banned moustaches for the English of Ireland and complained that ‘there is no difference in apparel between the English marchers and Irish enemies’. This allowed Irishmen to enter the colony as ‘marchers’ (settlers who lived on the extensive unsettled borderlands of the colony) and ‘rob and pillage by the high roads’. Moustaches threatened the very safety of the colony, and Englishmen who disobeyed the moustache ban suffered a harsh penalty. They lost the protection of English law, and could be captured along with their possessions and ransomed ‘as Irish enemies’. Essentially, if you looked Irish, you were treated that way.

This 1447 enactment provided an admirably clear definition of what precisely a moustache is (and all without using the word ‘moustache’ (!), which was not in English parlance in the fifteenth century). It stated that ‘no manner of man who will be accounted for an Englishman have any beard above the mouth, that is to say, that he have no hair upon his upper lip, so that the said lip be at least shaven within two weeks, or of equal growth with the nether lip’.

Mistaken identity was identified as a major problem with both moustaches and cúláns in a 1297 parliamentary enactment. It stated that colonists mistakenly killed other colonists wearing these Irish styles, assuming they were Irishmen. This was problematic because ‘the killing of Englishmen and of Irishmen requires different forms of punishment’. Englishmen faced capital punishment for killing fellow Englishman, but not Irishmen. If any restitution was provided for the deaths of Irishmen it was normally by payment of a fine. Therefore, an understandable mistake about someone’s ethnic identity could be deadly. These homicides within the colonial community also caused feuding and ‘rancor’ between settler families. All Englishmen in Ireland, therefore, were instructed to wear the ‘custom and tonsure of the English’.

The problem of mistaken identity and consequent threats to the property and even lives of English colonists was perhaps the most pressing reason for moustache bans (which continued into the sixteenth century), but it was not the only one. Enactments regulating appearance and visual display were passed alongside those regulating the use of the Irish language, intermarriage between the English and Irish, and other practices frowned on by the colonial administration. English outward appearance was part and parcel of English identity, which colonists feared was increasingly under threat in the later middle ages, as cultural exchange between the colonists and the Irish continued apace. The moustache was, for colonial authorities, an ominous marker of the erosion of ‘Englishness’ in Ireland.

 

Dr Sparky Booker is a postdoctoral researcher at Swansea University on the AHRC funded project ‘Women Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice, Britain and Ireland 1100-1750’. Her research for this project examines the legal capabilities, strategies and successes of Irish and English women in the English colony in Ireland from 1300-1500. Other research interests include relations between the English and Irish in late medieval Ireland; the Irish church; sumptuary law; and medieval understandings of race and ethnicity. Her monograph on cultural exchange and identity in ‘the four obedient shires’ of Ireland from 1399-1534 is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.